Shakespearean Ice Bucket Challenges

Weeks ago, maybe you saw a few of your friends dumping buckets of ice water over their heads on Facebook. Then sports figures, politicians, and celebrities. I even saw Kermit the Frog do one, which I thought was hysterical — “Being an amphibian, dumping an ice cold bucket of water over my head could very likely put me into a dormant state where my heart my actually stop.”

Of course it’s all to spread the message to Stop ALS, so it’s all for a good cause.

He in turn nominates Benedict Cumberbatch and Helena Bonham Carter. Mr. Cumberbatch is about to tackle Hamlet, while Ms. Bonham-Carter has a number of credits, including Ophelia to Mel Gibson’s 1990 Hamlet. (He also nominated Luke Evans. Now, I don’t know who that is, but I’ll come back to it in a minute. Trust me.)

So here’s Mr. Cumberbatch making the best faces, doing it naked:

And now Ms. Bonham Carter, who doesn’t even get out her speech before the dude behind her can’t wait any longer.

But why should all these youngsters have the fun? Sir Ian himself also played the game after being nominated by … Luke Evans. See how everything is deeply intertwingled?

I don’t know who nominated Dame Judi Dench, but I love that she still looks and sounds like a queen even when getting doused:

Alas, Sir Patrick Stewart does not want to play. Or, rather, he opts to write a big check and instead puts his ice where it belongs, in his glass. That would be funnier if I didn’t have such a huge list of his contemporaries playing along.